The invention relates to the field of markets for digital goods and systems and methods for eliciting user feedback about digital goods provided by these markets. Digital goods include software applications; music, movies, books or other information or entertainment content in digital form; and virtual items in game applications. Digital goods are available for a wide variety of digital devices, including desktop, portable, and tablet computers; video game consoles; set-top boxes adapted to present digital content on a television or computer monitor; mobile phones and smartphones; and e-book reader devices. Digital goods may be purchased, rented, licensed, or obtained at no cost from a digital goods market. Once acquired, a digital good may be downloaded to a user's device via a wired or wireless network connection or through a data connection with another digital device. Digital goods may be stored in non-volatile memory in a digital device, such as on a hard disk or in flash memory, or provided to the digital device on demand from a digital goods provider or intermediary.
Digital goods markets present users with a wide variety of digital goods. Because of this, it is often difficult for users to find digital goods that meet their needs and are of good quality. To assist users, digital goods markets may provide recommendations; measures of digital goods' popularity, such as sales rankings; and reviews of digital goods from other users.
One problem with user reviews is selection bias. Although many digital goods markets allow any user of a digital good (or any user in general) to provide a review of a digital good, the users that provide reviews may not be a representative sample of all of the users of that digital good. This can be due to one or more factors, including the user interfaces provided by the digital goods market for collecting user reviews. For example, a device may ask a user to rate or review a downloaded application when the user deletes the application from the device. However, the users that delete the application are more likely to be dissatisfied with the application. In contrast, users that are satisfied with the application may have to go out of their way to provide a positive review, such logging into a separate web site. Another example of selection bias results if dissatisfied users are more motivated than satisfied users of a digital good.